On January 31st, Facebook held its Q4 2017 Earnings Call and beat Wall Street’s expectations with $12.97 billion in revenue. Amazing. The earnings seemed to mitigate any negativity around a significant decline in daily usage. Just after the earnings were released, and before the actual earnings call, Mark Zucerkberg announced on his profile:

“…we made changes that reduced time spent on Facebook by roughly 50 million hours every day.”

Those changes were, “showing fewer viral videos to make sure people’s time is well spent.”

Zuck goes on to say, “By focusing on meaningful connections, our community and business will be stronger over the long term.”

In fact, on the earnings call, I found it of particular interest how frequently Zuck brought up the latest Facebook buzz words and phrases such as: increasing social interactions, improving health, wellbeing, long term happiness, feeling less alone, giving people what they tell Facebook they want, etc. This is a good thing, right?! We’ll see. 😉 I’m also fascinated by how we are all witnessing the amazing evolution of mainstream TV –> digital TV –> social streaming TV…

Read more of my thoughts on Zuck’s post and the earnings call highlights:

This Week’s Top 3 Articles

Despite the regular algorithm tweaks + periodic sweeping changes, Facebook advertising success is within everyone’s reach. It may seem daunting at first, but help is at hand. This is one of the best posts I’ve seen in some time — check out the range of new strategies and perennial favorites put together by my friends at KlientBoost.

Video is by far the best performing type of content marketing in today’s online world. It’s an essential part of any marketing plan. Sometimes the hardest part is getting started, though. Chris Williams (Chief Product Officer of iHeartMedia), Jesse Hertzberg (former CEO of Livestream) and Hope King (anchor at Cheddar Media) provide helpful insights here.

The 70 million small businesses on Facebook represent one of the largest communities of small businesses in the world… and Facebook is on a mission to help them. Last November, the company announced its new Community Boost program—an effort intended to help people grow their businesses or gain new skills to find a job. On January 18, 2018, Facebook unveiled the first five cities on the US tour:

St. Louis, Missouri – March 26 – 30

Houston, Texas – April 3 – 6

Albuquerque, New Mexico – April 30 – May 4

Greenville, South Carolina – May 29 – Jun 1

Des Moines, Iowa – June 4 – 8

The Community Boost program will expand to 30 cities in the US. And, Facebook is rolling out more training in Europe:

Facebook states, “We’re committing to open three new community skills hubs in Spain, Poland and Italy, and to have trained 1 million people and business owners across the EU by 2020. Today we’re also announcing a 10-million Euro investment in innovation in France through our artificial intelligence research facility.”

Facebook will be holding its second Communities Summit (the first was last summer in Chicago). “We will recognize Facebook communities and the people who build them by bringing together some of the top community builders like group admins, event creators, and page admins on Facebook.” This application-only event is already maxed out. However, you can watch the Official Livestream.

Facebook Video Marketing: What’s Working Now

I teamed up with my good friends at Wave.video for this free two-part training series on video Marketing!

MEET ME IN SAN DIEGO at these two epic industry conferences!

I’m delighted to be speaking at two back-to-back major industry conferences next month! If you don’t have your tickets yet, check it out and come join me, if you can!

With the sweeping Facebook changes, now is the ideal time to attend one or both of these top marketing conferences to learn from the best industry experts. Along with Facebook keynotes and tracks, you’ll also benefit from a variety of educational sessions on video, podcasting, content marketing, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, analytics, search and much more.

TRAFFIC & CONVERSION SUMMIT 2018, February 26-28, 2018. San Diego, California. I’m thrilled to be giving the opening keynote on day #3 at T&C! (This will be my second time sharing the stage with SharkTank’s Daymond John!) Good news! My friends at Digital Marketer, hosts of the T&C summit, have given me a $300 discount on tickets for my peeps when you use the code “imsmarter” – hehee, love that. Hope to see you there! Let me know if you’re going.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING WORLD 2018, February 28-March 2, 2018. San Diego, California. This will be my sixth year in a row headlining at SMMW, and it’s truly one of my all time favorite industry conferences! Learn from hundreds of expert-lead sessions and network with 3,500+ of your peers! SMMW has a variety of ticket choices and if you’re not able to come join us in person, do check out the virtual ticket option!

FREE FACEBOOK BUSINESS BRIEFING with Mari Smith, March 3, 2018. San Diego, California plus virtual tickets for live streaming option. By popular demand, I’m hosting a special event on the Saturday immediately following SMMW18. We have limited seats available for the free in-person event which includes a delicious brunch. We are already maxed out with a waiting list. However, good news is we will be live streaming the Facebook Briefing and would love to have you join us! Save your virtual ticket here.

That’s a wrap for this week’s issue of The Social Scoop. Keep on enjoying 2018 and we’ll talk again next week!

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